Where is WIN2K.EXE?

Gherardo, you keep asking this question, then someone responds, then you miss the answer and repeat.

Right now, you can't run it. The CD version of the game (i.e. retail) has a special EXE.  Prior to release, we will also create a universal binary.  But no, you can't run it on Win2K. You won't be able to run it until the release day on Win2K.

Could someone please elaborate a bit on the Win2K issue? I read some bits here and there, but I don't get the whole picture. I'm running Win2K (non-English version btw) and had no problems up to Beta 5, is this going to change with the final release?

There are some quirky issues going on with non-english Win2k machines running GC2... enough issues that you cannot play the game.... the dev team is putting alot of time and effort into tracking down the source of the problem, so I would not even -worry- about it at all until release day is here. If you can run the game on your non-english Win2k on release day...it's like the bug never existed right? IF for some reason they cannot come up with a solution, I can assure you that somebody from the dev team will make some kind of announcement about it. They're that upfront about issues, they wont try and hide it.

So relax. Grab a soda. Read a book. Savor the screenshots and previews. Your time is coming!

Your time is coming!

Yor time?

Thanks for the response, mavx21. I'm not nervous - yet.
How come I could perfectly play Beta 5 then? Okay, I know the game has been changed massively since then, but I still wonder about it, and hope a fix will be made.

Brad, yes you are right, and yes I have missed answers because I lost track of conversations. Thanks for the additional answer
I'm not worried anyway, I have known you and stardock for so long and even before that I know you stand behind your words.

Gherardo

On English Win2K.  We're fine.  The problem occurred because we made loading the game windows into a thread and Windows 2000 doesn't like loading the GUI in a thread.

But we are currently clueless about non-English Windows 2000.  It doesn't work.  But Established's feedback here just helped tremendously because it means it did used to work.

Established, which language are you running of Windows 2000?

My version is German.
Just tell me if there's anything I can do or try to run on my system, it would be a pleasure to help you. (Last version I had running successfully was 0.81a.015, didn't try after that.)

Edit: I may be totally wrong, but perhaps it makes a difference that I'm using SP4? (don't know about your test case)
The word "thread" appears a couple of times in the SP4 changelog, especially the first occurence might be interesting. (Link)

We did resolve the problem on non-English Win2K.

Basically, Microsoft no longer supports the DirectX SDK running on Windows 2000.  During the beta, I was using a very very old SDK (October 2004) and that one was still compatible.

So the net result is that we will be able to support Windows 2000 non-English but they will have to download a seperate file.  I also don't know how long we'll actually be able to keep doing that as it's quite a process to go and do a special build for what is realistically a very small number of people.  But we'll worry about that later. 

So the bottom line is yes, non-English Windows 2000 users will be able to play GalCiv II but they will have to download a seperate EXE.  Why it works on Windows 2000 English without a problem is something only Microsoft can answer.

Thanks for the information, sounds good that the problem is manageable.

So it'll be worthwhile to pre-download tomorrow for me and others in the same situation? We'll just have to download a different .exe file later to be able to play?

Yea basically you'll download just the same as everyone else but then you'll need to go to the downloads section and get the different EXE.

Great Brad.
Sooner or later we'll have to upgrade...
Gherardo